basic navigation of the world. Work on this movement until it feels pretty good, until
you find yourself enjoying playing the game in this simple, navigation-only way. Now
you can build on that by adding more movement options, such as strafing, crouching,
and jumping. As you add each new movement type, make sure that it does not break any
of the previous types of movement and that they all work well together. Only once that
is firmly in place should you try adding the ability for players to use the flyswatter. With
the flyswatter fun to use, at least in some limited way, it makes sense to add the insur-
ance agents into the game. The AI functionality can be broken down into building blocks
just like the players’ movement was. First, get the AI agents in the world so that play-
ers can whack them with the flyswatter. Next, get the agents moving around the
game-world before finally adding the ability for them to do their “audit” or “excessive
paperwork” attack. Finally, you can add the kiwis to the world and the ability for players
to pick them up and launch them with their flyswatter. What is essential in this
step-by-step process is that at each step along the way the game is still playable and fun.
When you add something to the game that breaks a previous portion or simply makes it
less fun, you must address this problem immediately. Now is the time to alter your
design as necessary, before the game swings into full production.
Throughout the project’s development, I think it is important to always keep a ver-
sion of your game playable. You should get your game playable in some primitive form
as soon as possible, ideally from day one, and keep it that way until you ship. Often pro-
gramming teams will go for a long time coding up various pieces of the game without
having a functional version that someone can sit down and play. It is very easy to lose
sight of your gameplay goals when your game languishes in an unplayable state for
much of the time. Certainly the game can be broken in many ways, with various compo-
nents that do not yet work as they are supposed to and with placeholder art used in
many locations. But as long as you always have a playable game, team members are able
to pick it up and play it, and see what they are working on and how it impacts the game.
And if anything added or changed makes this playable version of the game less fun, you
can immediately discover this problem and rectify it.
A Fully Functional Area .........................
Once you have many of the elements of your game mechanics working and you are
happy with them, the next step is to make an entire section of the game that functions
just like you want it to play in the final game. In many game genres this means one par-
ticular level of the game. You may think you have all of the components of your
gameplay functional, but once you actually try to make an entire area playable you will
quickly discover what you forgot to implement or failed to anticipate. Concentrate on
getting this one level as close to a final state as possible before moving on to the cre-
ation of other levels. If you are observant you will learn many lessons about how level
design must work for your particular game through the creation of this one level, les-
sons that will help to eliminate the element of guesswork from the creation of the other
levels in the game. Once you are done with this level, it will no longer be the best you
can do; you will have learned a lot, and subsequent levels you create will be better
planned from the beginning. Though you do not need to throw away this prototype level
yet, keep in mind that you should probably scrap it before the game ships.
288 Chapter 15: Getting the Gameplay Working